Employee Development Methods – 11 Steps to Personal Growth

With each passing year, it feels like the pace of our lives just keeps getting faster. How can we manage to keep our lives sane in the midst of these hectic times? One of the most important ways to maintain sanity is to focus on our own personal growth and development by using productive employee development methods. Motivation is a lot like taking your morning shower. Why do you take a morning shower? Because the one you took yesterday wore off? Our personal motivation has to come from within. Others can only guide us in the right direction.

Here are my 11 steps to personal growth that can stimulate your mind, body, and soul. By performing these acts regularly your own motivation, as well as that of others around you, will increase. Just think how good you feel when you do something for someone else. By practicing these 11 steps every day, you can dramatically change both your professional and personal life.

1. THINK FIRST OF THE OTHER PERSON: This is the foundation, the first step for getting along with others. It is the only truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Do this and the rest will be a breeze.
2. BUILD UP THE OTHER PERSON’S SENSE OF IMPORTANCE: When we make another person seem less important, we frustrate one of our deepest urges. Allow them to feel equality or superiority, then you can more easily get along with them.
3. RESPECT THE PERSONAL RIGHTS OF OTHERS : Respect the right of others to be different from you. Two personalities are never molded by the exact same forces.
4. GIVE SINCERE APPRECIATION: If you think someone has done something well, never hesitate to recognize them. Warning, this does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with intelligent people gets exactly what it deserves; contempt for the egotistical “phony” who stoops to it.
5. ELIMINATE THE NEGATIVE: Criticism seldom does what the user intended it to do. It invariably creates resentment, which will ultimately work to your disadvantage.
6. AVOID OPENLY TRYING TO REFORM PEOPLE: Everybody knows they’re not perfect. However, they do not want someone else trying to correct their faults. If you want to improve a person, help them to embrace a higher working goal. In turn, they’ll raise their own standard higher than you ever could.
7. TRY TO UNDERSTAND OTHERS: When you begin to see why others are the way they are, you cannot help but to get along better with them.
8. CHECK THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Follow Abraham Lincoln’s famous instruction; “I do not like that man, therefore, I shall get to know him better.”
9. TAKE CARE OF THE LITTLE DETAILS: Watch your smile, tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the manner in which you greet people, the use of nicknames. Remember faces, names, and dates. These little things will set you apart from others.
10. DEVELOP A GENUINE INTEREST IN PEOPLE: You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect, and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build a genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual trust and respect.
11. NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP ON YOURSELF: As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” You do truly have the power to succeed if you believe you can.

These ideas may seem like they are centered on those around you, but learning to interact well with others is actually one of the surest ways to ensure growth within yourself.

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